Characterization of Peptide Antibodies by Epitope Mapping Using Resin-Bound and Soluble Peptides

Characterization of peptide antibodies through identification of their target epitopes is of utmost importance. Understanding antibody specificity at the amino acid level provides the key to understand the specific interaction between antibodies and their epitopes and their use as research and diagnostic tools as well as therapeutic agents. This chapter describes a straightforward strategy for mapping of continuous peptide antibody epitopes using resin-bound and soluble peptides. The approach combines three different types of peptide sets for full characterization of peptide antibodies: (1) overlapping peptides, used to locate antigenic regions; (2) truncated peptides, used to identify the minimal peptide length required for antibody binding; and (3) substituted peptides, used to identify the key residues important for antibody binding and to determine the specific contribution of key residues. For initial screening resin-bound peptides are used for epitope estimation, while soluble peptides subsequently are used for fine mapping. The combination of resin-bound peptides and soluble peptides for epitope mapping provides a time-sparing and straightforward approach for characterization of peptide antibodies.